Embodiments of the invention relate generally to content management, and more particularly, to a method, system, and computer program product for managing content through a configurable interface.
The Internet has offered consumers and organizations the benefit of easy access to information. In a business context, this information can be an organization's main source of competitive advantage (e.g., it may enable a company to find an opportunity, identify and correct a liability, or provide input to the kind of synthesis that moves it forward). Currently, the sources and range of information available are expanding exponentially. Examples of information sources include instant messaging, social networking, news aggregators, wikis, and other collaborative applications. Ironically, however, this increasing volume of information has a parallel trend in obscurity of information. The more information there is available, the harder it becomes to manage the information and focus on the sources and subjects that are relevant.
Existing feed readers (also referred to as “news aggregators”) attempt to solve the problem of managing information from multiple sources by bringing much of the information into one place. Instead of visiting each information source for content, the content is delivered to the recipient. Although aggregation of information from various sources is helpful, it would not solve the problem of information overload. Some feed readers enable the ability to tailor the information in various textual formats, such as displaying a preview page, displaying full content, displaying content summaries or headlines, or labeling/coloring information from specified people or sources. However, these customization options are limited in that they present the incoming information as a textual list. While textual listings may be beneficial in some cases, such as when a user desires to review each item in the list, this form of presentation may not be suitable for all types of content.
Another drawback with existing feed readers is that they do not give users an easy way to separate and focus on the important information sources. While some feed readers offer the ability to group information sources in folders, this option can become a cumbersome a task where a user desires to track feeds based upon a relevance of the information to the user, especially when the importance changes on a daily basis.
It would be desirable to provide a flexible user interface that allows contextual customization of how the user views information from various sources.